FIGURE 1 HERE
Challenges associated with forging a career in music performance included pressures
on time, financial hardship, professional competition and self-doubt (Figure 2). For
musicians in all genres, pressures on time and self-doubt were particularly strong
themes, although Scottish traditional musicians placed less emphasis on time
pressures than musicians from other genres and popular musicians placed less
emphasis on self-doubt than the other genres. Financial hardship was given the
greatest weight by popular musicians, while competition was given more prominence
in the accounts of Scottish traditional musicians than those from other genres.
However, these comparisons are descriptive of these cases only and should not be
generalized, as the sample size in each genre was very small.